Russophobe as regarded Turkey, he sneered at England's
sentimental support of nationalities as "Platonic": a capital
epithet he called it, and envied the Frenchman who applied it to
us, declaring that it had turned all the women against us. He was
moved by receiving Korniloff's portrait with a kind message from
the dead hero's family, seeing in the features a confirmation of
the ideal which he had formed in his own mind and had tried to
convey to others. Readers of his book will recall the fine tribute
to Korniloff's powers, and the description of his death, in
Chapters VI. and XIII. of Vol. IV. (Cabinet Edition).
Many of his comments on current events are preserved in the notes
or in the memories of his friends. Sometimes these were
characteristically cynical. He ridiculed the newspaper parade of
national sympathy with the Prince of Wales's illness: "We are
represented as all members of the royal family, and all in family
hysterics." Dizzy's orientalization of Queen Victoria into an
Empress angered him, as it angered many more. The last Empress
Regnant, he said, was Catherine II.
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